


star light, star bright

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Nursery Rhyme References, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 19:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9509378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: Stars are for wishing, they say.





	

The first star of the evening flickers and dances high above the rooftops, a distant spot of silver in the purple, velvet sky, and Vex, lying spread-eagled in their dirt-and-grass garden, brightens to see it.

“Mama!” she says, word round and soft in her mouth. “Star!”

“My, what sharp eyes you have,” Mother says, following the line of one pudgy finger to the spot of light. “Are you going to make a wish?”

Vex twists her head around to look at her mother. “A wish?” she asks, dust and leaves catching in her hair, and Elaina laughs and beckons her closer. Vex scrambles up to settle in her lap. She so rarely gets Mother all to herself, but Vax is in a mood today––that’s what Mother says, anyway, with a fond shake of her head––and has spent the evening sulking in their room. Vex thinks that’s rather silly of him, but Mother says boys are often silly like that, so Vex puts it out of mind.

“A wish,” she repeats with a nod. "You’re supposed to make a wish on the first star of the evening.”

“How come?” Vex asks, and Elaina laughs.

“I’m not sure, love,” she admits. “It’s something my mother taught me.” 

“How do the stars know? Can they hear you?”

“Yes,” says Mother. “But you have to ask a special way, so they can understand.”

“I want to know!” says Vex. “Tell me!”

“Tell me...?”

“Tell me please,” Vex huffs, and her mother gently unravels her messy braid and runs her fingers through her hair as she speaks, half song and half poem.

“Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”

For a moment Mother’s voice hums in the air, an almost-echo reaching up into the open crown of the sky, and they stare up at the fainting, twinkling light high above them. Vex stares and thinks hard, silently shouting her wish so that the small, faraway light might hear. Elaina presses a kiss to the top of her head and begins to braid her hair again, tight and neat.

“Did you make a wish?” she asks, and Vex nods.

“Will it come true?” she asks, staring ahead as Mother’s fingers twist through her thick hair.

“If the star hears it,” Mother says. “They’re very far away, so they have to listen very carefully.”

“I hope they did. I wished for a new dress.”

“Don’t tell me,” Mother laughs. “The wishes are for the stars. If you tell anyone else, they might not come true.”

Vex deflates. “I didn’t mean to mess it up,” she mumbles.

Mother ties off the braid and gives it a little tug before lifting Vex out of her lap.

“It might turn out okay,” she says. “I suppose we’ll have to wait and see.”

Vex pouts as she stands. “Alright,” she says, unconvinced, and Mother sighs that way she does when she’s actually very happy.

“Come on, love,” she says, standing herself. “The tinker stopped by today and had a present for you.”

“A present?” Vex trails after Mother, content to be coaxed inside by the promise of a surprise before bed. She pauses only briefly, turning in the doorway to stare up at the first flickering star of the evening, and wishes extra hard, just in case.

That night there are sweets before bed, hard sticky candies that melt in her mouth like fresh snow, and three days later Mother gifts them with new clothes, a tunic for Vax and a dress for Vex, and she knows her wish has come true.

* * *

 “This is stupid,” Vax scowls, staring at the evening sky above Syngorn. “They’re just stars.”

“You’re stupid,” Vex retorts. “And besides, if you don’t want it to come true it won’t anyways, so there.”

“Whatever, bossy,” Vax grumbles. He doesn’t make any move to go in, though, even though the evening’s chill creeps in and they’ll get in trouble for staying out too late, so Vex knows he doesn’t really mean it. Together they sit among the branches and look to the skies, searching for––

“There!” Vex crows, nearly tumbling out of the tree, and Vax grabs her by the back of her shirt.

“Careful,” he snaps, but Vex ignores that in favor of scrambling up to get a better view, craning her neck just so, and the faraway pinprick of light peers back down at her through the thick canopy of the forest. It’s such a tiny thing among the dark of the trees, a single patchwork square of purple velvet against green-black, and for a moment Vex simply stares, and tries not to be homesick.

“Well?” asks Vax.

”Shut up,” says Vex. “I’m thinking.”

She’s not, though. She already knows her wish; it’s the same one she’s been making since she saw Mother disappearing around the bend in Byroden, folded in on herself and so frail beneath the open sky. She misses home. She misses her family, real family. Not this facsimile that stares down his nose and is never proud, no matter how hard they try.

If she wishes hard enough, maybe it will come true. Maybe this time the stars will listen. Maybe.

Maybe it’s foolish, but she wishes anyways.

“You can make on too, you know,” she tells her brother as she pulls her eyes away from the sliver of sky to stare at him. “If you want.”

“If wishes were horses,” he says, but his eyes flick up to the sky anyways, and he’s quiet for a moment. “What did you wish for?”

“If I tell you it won’t come true,” she says, and he huffs out a sigh.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s magic. Do you know anything about magic?”

“No,” he laughs, “and I never will.”

Vex hasn’t got anything to say to that, and even if she did he’d try to get in the last word, because he’s a dick like that, so she sighs and bumps her leg against his, and wishes they were home.

But they aren’t, and Vax is right, a little. She pushes herself upright, balancing on the branch with her arms outstretched to each side, and enjoys the way the breeze brushes her shoulders, and says, “Last one home’s a rotten egg!” before half-tumbling down through the weave of branches.

“No fair!” Vax shouts above her, but she’s too busy swinging from one branch to another to do anything but revel in the thrill of almost-flying and laugh.

And maybe, she thinks as she hits the ground with a roll, Vax still shouting behind her, this time, this time the stars will hear.

* * *

Byroden is–– It leaves a hollow within her, an empty aching space, cold and distant like the stars.

She doesn’t mean to make a wish. It almost makes her sick, the open sky and the silent stars. But it is a hard thing to ignore your guides, and as they slip back into the hungry forest, leave home and hearth and heart behind, she catches a glimpse of a single twinkling light, an impartial observer, and she finds herself wishing anyways, half wish and half prayer and all hope. She stands at the threshold of the woods, still and small and bathed in moonlight, and wishes.

Then she wipes the tears away and turns towards the looming shadows, and with a deep breath she follows her brother into the wide, wild world.

* * *

“Are you sure about this?” Vex murmurs over the quiet hiss and crackle of the fire. Trinket is warm at her back, and the smell of warm fur almost blocks out the stench of the nearby swampland. A gentle breeze drifts off the ocean to the east, brings with it the salt-damp of the sea and a moment’s respite from the thick humidity. Vax pokes the fire with a stick, sending sparks dancing through the air. Trinket rumbles.

“They’ll have work,” he promises. “It’s not a big town, but it’s a port. We’ll do alright.”

Vex peels the heavy mass of  her hair off her shoulder, and takes a moment to appreciate the breeze. “We’ll go in the morning then,” she says. They haven’t the coin to stay a night at the inn even if they wanted to, and Vex doesn’t fancy picking their way through the swamp in the dark. Even with their sharp eyesight, it’s a risk best not taken. “I’ll take first watch.”

“Alright, Stubby. Wake me in three?”

“Course.”

He leans back, stretches out on the slightly damp ground, and within minutes his breathing evens out, chest rising and falling in the firelight, face slack and younger than it ever is awake shadows melting away to reveal the boy beneath.

“Well, buddy,” she says to Trinket, “looks like it’s you and me tonight.”

Trinket huffs and she digs her fingers into his thick coat to scratch his side. He wriggles into it, rumbling happily, and Vex lets her head fall back against him to stare up at the sky. The moon is a narrow crescent to the southeast; tomorrow the sky will be dark. New moons are good for new beginnings, Vex thinks, and shakes the old superstition away.

“Think we’ll find work?” she asks him. It’s been a dry few weeks, and they’ve been scraping the bottom of their already-light purse. They’ve gotten good at what they do, working for whoever has the gold to spare and not asking questions, but if this drought keeps up they’ll be back to their old ways, and Vax hasn’t cut a purse to feed them in nearly a year now. She’d thought things were going well. She’d honestly thought maybe they were finally making their way towards something resembling respectability, something that could almost be called a livelihood.

“Maybe this is it,” she says to Trinket, who shifts so she can scratch a particular itchy spot on his back. “We’ll finally catch a good break. What d’you think, buddy. Feeling lucky?”

Trinket rumbles, and Vex sighs. The stars hide tonight, thick clouds rolling in from the ocean, and she misses the familiarity of the guiding sky. She scans the camp, then the horizon, and ah, there, a break in the clouds where a pale, twinkling light shines through. She’s far too old to believe in wishes now, has seen far too much of the world.

Sometimes, though, it feels nice to hope.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky this time,” she echoes, watching the clouds swallow the silver pinprick, and she sighs. The world sighs with the rustle of the breeze and the quiet song of crickets. She positions herself more comfortably against Trinket and settles in for three hours watch at the outskirts of Stillben.

* * *

 “Right,” says the gnome three days into their contract, the drought of work finally broken by a handful of interesting-looking jobs in town that have led, more or less, to the two of them kicking around with an odd group of travelers and adventurers. Including this gnome, who has propped his feet up on his pack and stares up at the dimming sky through the scattered canopy. “You guys do this regularly, then?”

“Regularly enough,” says Vex, watching the shadows of the trees bend and shift against the orange-gold-purple swath of sunset above them. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason,” says the gnome. His fingers tap against his thigh, a quick pattern Vex doesn’t quite catch but she’s sure it’s music; he’s been humming and singing since they met and carries near half a dozen instruments on his person, an impressive feat for someone so small. He seems to bleed music the way other people bleed red. “You just seem a little young, that’s all.”

Vex laughs. “What, and you’re not?”

The rhythm on his thigh changes, a jaunty beat to something gentler. “Not really, no.”

Vex doesn’t know what to say to that. She tilts her head further back and watches the sky shift, waits for the first star of evening. Vax, poking at what will hopefully be their meal, glances up when he thinks she isn’t paying attention, and Vex smothers a smile at that.

“What’re you looking for?” asks the gnome, eyes sharp as he glances between them. Vex shrugs.

“Stars.”

"Making wishes?"

She doesn't know where the honesty comes from. "Yes."

He laughs, not the dancing high laugh she’s heard from him, but a quiet huff. “Gotta be careful what you wish for,” he says. “The stars listen.”

Vex presses her lips together and peers up as the sun disappears below the horizon and first twinkling lights flicker into view. Star light, star bright.

“That’s what I’m counting on,” she says, and sees the gnome smile out of the corner of her eye.

She has been wishing for home for so long now it is almost an afterthought, more routine than wish. And yet. She sees that curling smile and the huff of a laugh, and her brother’s hair shift as he too looks up, and the pair of dragonborn deep in conversation at the edge of camp, and the druid girl drawing flowers from the earth, and the goliath sharpening his axe, and something in her says _maybe, maybe, maybe_.

The stars are made for wishing, they say. The stars listen.

Well. She’s counting on it.


End file.
